Letter to a Tenant – October 30

by a contributor

Laura Kochman

Close up the garage. Put away your bucket of shells. I have been, outside, in the night light of the sea, watching. And over the sea wall it came—a comet. The oysters shuddered in their shells, and my feet quaked in the sand as I watched it. Red marrow through a black sky. Rock in place of a moon, no moon, no moon, no witness but me and the oysters, and it shook the water. And it drove a line through the sky, a red welt. I felt it on my own skin. All right—I wanted to feel it on my own, old skin. If only on my skin. If only to touch. I was a wet witness, a well of eyes, and I saw it break apart into four red lines like a chicken’s foot, and it shone on the water, and it walked on the waves.

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Laura Kochman, originally from New Jersey, is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama, where she’s also the poetry editor for Black Warrior Review. Her work is found or forthcoming in Copper Nickel, PANK, Jellyfish, The Journal for Compressed Creative Arts, alice blue review, and others.